We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Oracle HFM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools."When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"You can bring in data from any source and from multiple sources, and you can consolidate that data in HFM."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features are around consolidations, eliminations, conversions."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility and ease of configuration in terms of testing and formula creation."
"It is a very user-friendly software."
"The tool is stable."
"Financial consolidation and reporting tool with good built-in features such as currency exchange and elimination."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"The solution's support could be better."
"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."
"The complexity is okay. I don't see it as super complex. The solution could have more functionality to make it a little bit more flexible."
"Integration is an area where it lacks and can be improved."
"The solution has integration challenges. We need a simple tool that is fool-proof for the data that is submitted not only for consolidation purposes but also for performance management and reporting purposes."
"The intercompany reporting function in this tool needs improvement, particularly being able to run reports in batches, rather than one at a time."
"If there could be data integration between HFM and the accounting software that would be ideal."
"It's a difficult process to try to edit, configure, or change the business rules that exist and work within HFM."
"In terms of improvement, one challenge with Oracle HFM is the need for technical knowledge in writing SQL syntax for custom extensions."
IBM Cognos is ranked 7th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 132 reviews while Oracle HFM is ranked 7th in Business Performance Management with 14 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.0, while Oracle HFM is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Oracle HFM writes "Offers flexibility and ease of configuration". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, Tableau, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and Oracle Hyperion, whereas Oracle HFM is most compared with Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud, Oracle Hyperion, OneStream XF, CCH Tagetik and Adaptive Insights.
We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.